Bitter harvest for the sugar
Anecito Emalav, 28, married and the father of three children, was killed ten days ago, on August 3. He was taking the bus home when four hired gunmen attacked him at point blank range. You can see the powder workers of Negros burns on the right side of his face. Anecito belonged to the sugar workers' union, the National Federation of Sugar Workers - Food and General Trade (NFSW-FGT). He had been active for around a year, after being wounded during the Escalante maswhen 21 demonstrators
THE ESSENTIALLY urban character of the "February revolution", which threw out the dictator Ferdinand Marcos and carried Corazon Aquino to power, should not make us forget that the archipelago of over 7,000 islands that make up the Philippines remains largely agricultural. (1) Forty-nine per cent of the economically active population are in the agricultural sector, and 70 per cent depend on this sector for a living
Since the fall of Marcos, struggles still continue in the countryside, all the more because the power of the landowners and their relation to the state apparatus has not been broken. Relations of domination and exploitation of the mass of peasants and agricultural workers remain largely intact.
One of the mainstays of the Philippine agricultural economy is sugar, which for 30 years had a guaranteed outlet by virtue of the Laurel-Langley Treaty. This treaty was signed in 1946 at the same time as the United States granted political independence to the Philippines, after 50 years of colonization. But it expired in 1974, and since then on the world market the Philippines' sugar economy has had to face competition from other sugar-producing countries and from synthetic sugar substitutes.
This has had drastic consequences for the island of Negros, a principal centre for sugar production since the nineteenth century. But Negros also has a long tradition of mass struggles, going back to the uprisings against Spanish colonizers at the end of the nineteenth century, which is being carried on today by the agricultural workers' sacre, including 18 sugar workers - were shot down by the "forces of law and order"
Anecito also helped organize a 17day long strike at the DDCH hacienda, whose owner, Rodolfo Lizares, is one of the principal shareholders of the Danao refinery. This refinery is where the murderers took refuge on August 3, after perpetrating their crime.
In August it was already seven months since ex-President Marcos had been driven out of the country and Cory Aquino became president. But certain large plantation owners in Negros kept their guns. The police, army and para-military forces have not been purged, and terrorism against the poor has begun again. Anecito is not the first to die in the north of the island since the "February revolution".
Uldarico Antojado, a worker on the Gutierrez plantation in the Toboso district, a trade unionist and a lay activist in the church, was kidnapped and his body found in a makeshift grave on May 23.
As for Morito Pastidio, from the San Jose hacienda, who was also an active trade unionist, he too was kidnapped by armed men and left to die, riddled with bullets, in a cane unions. PAUL PETITJEAN and SONIA RUPON
The funeral procession stretched out, leaving the tarmac road for dirt tracks. It was August 13, 1986. The sugar cane, ever present in the plain, overran the foothills into which we were walking. Cane is the queen in this kingdom of sugar. It grows everywhere, covering the island of Negros in a lush, green cloak. But for the plantation workers, it is the offseason. They have no work to do and their children go hungry.
Sugar! It was the wealth of the Philippines - at least for the arrogant elite of mestizo planters, the merchants, politicians and foreign companies. (2) It never enriched those who worked the land, who planted, cut and gathered the cane, crushed the stalks and refined the juice. But today, a crisis has hit the sugar industry. Having failed to envisage any other 6 future than one of permanent super-exploitation of their workers, the planters were taken by surprise by the collapse of sugar prices in the world market, by the progressive closing of American borders to imports and the intensification of international competition.
Although they had no control over any of this, the sugar workers were clearly the first to be hit by the crisis. Food shortages are taking their toll. In the off-season, children begin to die from malnutrition. In the plantation we to are visiting tomorrow, the Santo Rosario de Murcia hacienda, two children have died from hunger recently. In the neighbouring Abo Abo hacienda, twelve have died. The person whose coffin we were following died because he wanted his children to live.
field on July 11.
The NFSW-FGT made this accusation: "The union believes that there is a coordinated effort on the part of some despotic miller-planters to go after active unionists who demand just wages and/or farm lots Their strong anti-worker and antipeople stand must be exposed and condemned by everyone who agrees with the present thrusts of the Aquino government in restoring freedom, democracy and justice, not only for a few, but for the great majority of people
"No blood debts will go unpaid. Today the workers suffer. But even today, hundreds of thousands choose to risk their lives so that the voice of the working class may be heard. It is a voice that speaks of hunger,
See "Growing guerrilla movement fuelled by peasant desperation", by Paul Petitjean, 'International Viewpoint" No. 49, March 26, 1984.
"Mestizo" IS a Spanish term for people of part-Indian, part-European descent. International Viewpoint 13 October 1986
poverty, repression under centuries of exploitation and oppression by a few."(3)
This appeal from the sugar workers' federation was heeded. Many of Anecito's fellow workers followed his coffin along the road that links Escalante, where he was attacked, and Toboso, where he lived. Others joined them for the religious service, and for a protest meeting organized by the union at his burial.
August 13 is an anniversary for the workers' movement. Four years earlier, the Marcos regime was sharply attacking the unions, national leaders into prison for months among them. A central leader of the KMU, Felixberto died shortly after being released early due to health. (4) Today in Manila and elsewhere, thousands of other workers Demonstration of sugar cane workers (DR) are demonstrating to commemorate the struggle waged under the dicatorship, and to affirm the need to continue to fight for workers' rights.
Negros, the ruined sugar kingdom,
La sharp image after Marcos. The previous mayor of Escalante was involved up to his neck in the massacre of September 20, 1985. The new mayor of the town sent soldiers to head up the funeral procession that we were But it was to protect the march, not to intimidate it. Negros still a militarized zone
Some progressive elements, sometimes linked to the militant Bayan coalition, have in fact been appointed to administrative posts since the "February revolution", to replace Marcos's men. (5) The new "democratic space" that opened up made itself felt. Nita Cherniguin, president of the international solidarity commission of the NFSW-FGT, told us that here 46 political prisoners had been freed since February, which meant nearly all of them. But the armed forces are continuing their outrages: Negros remains a militarized zone.
The mass organizations insistently demand that army units known for their repression of the people be withdrawn, and that those in command be tried. Rex Arnaldo, president of Bayan-Negros, has called for the dismantling of the Civilian Home Defence Forces (CHDF), paramilitary groups which are particularly detested. He noted that it was not sufficient just to change their name, as some people proposed, in order to transform their character.
The regional leadership of the National Democratic Front (NDF),
International Viewpoint 13 October 1986 which is clandestine and engaged in cease-fire talks with the government, has launched an appeal to civilian leaders asking them to publicly denounce the army's abuses.
But many of the new officers in
(administrators the president) will not interfere in "military affairs". For the governor of Negros' western province, Daniel Lacson, it is not in his area of jurisdiction. He says he can play no other role than that of "facilitator"!
Pressed on the subject, Lacson concluded by declaring to Father Gordoncillo, director of Social Action: "Do you want a dead governor?" (6)
On Negros, as in the rest of the -country, the possibilities of a cease. fire between government forces and the NDF, and between the army and the New People's Army (NPA), are being explored. (7) For the moment prospects here are gloomy.
The regional rebel leaders have made known what they think of the chances in their own way. It is in the southern part of the country that the NPA has experienced its most spectacular growth. After a lull in the fighting following the "February the army relaunched counter-insurgency operations in May. The zone known as CHICKS was to become the theatre of these tions, which led to the deaths of two civilian (both young peasants), the wounding of two more and the burning of eight houses. (8)
The NPA denounced this breaking of the truce, and by way of retaliation attacked a Bravo Coy detachment on
20, killing two account of the attack will be given to the media by the NPA.
The army reacted violently, moving unprecedented forces into the region: cannons, mortars, transports and helicopters. The fighting lasted two weeks, with a fifth of houses being destroyed in the combat zone, one peasant killed, a number of others wounded and more than 3,000 people taking refuge in neighbouring towns.
The bishop of Bacolod, the capital of western Negros, talked directly with the NDF in June with a view to future negotiations. Faced with the sabotage of any prospects of talks, Monseigneur hide his exasperation. He told the press: "I am pro-Cory but I protest this militarization strongly." (9)
This was not the first bitter experience for Bishop Fortich. In 1978 organized a meeting between some unionized workers and some planters in order to try to resolve a big conflict over land occupation. But this did not prevent the army from arresting the workers under his nose, after they had been assured of his protection! Moreover, his episcopal residence was burnt to the ground by hired thugs in the wake of the Escalante massacre. The bishop had, in fact, violently protested against the slaughter of June 20, 1985. Only the blackened ruin of his residence still stands beside Bacolod Cathedral.
Monseigneur Fortich is even more worried about the development of
3. release, "NFSW-FGT condemns atrocities against workers in the north" Serge в aerial, general secretary, August 7, 1986, Bacolod City.
4. KMU: Kulusang Mayo Uno the May 1 Movement, main class-struggle union federation, established in 1980.
5. Bayan: Bagong Alyansang Makabayan - New Patriotic Alliance.
Inquirer's Eye, July 18-31, 1986, p. 7, Bacolod City.
7. NPA: guerrilla force set up by the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) in 1969.
"CHICKS" refers to in Negros comprising the towns of Candoni. Hinobaan, Ilog, Cauayan, Kabankalan and Sipalay: the initials of these towns form the acronym
9. 'Inquirer's Eye, op. cit. 7
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ONFSW
International Viewpoint 13 October 1986 the situation because he knows very well that it is explosive. He has said that the isle of Negros is a "social volcano" which could erupt at any moment. The island has been completely devoted to sugar cane since the nineteenth at a time when production is dropping dramatically, there have for any alternative to sugar industry in 1980 employed 500,000 people. Three million this industry. Cane is grown in Central Luzon, South Tagalog, on other islands of the Visayas. But the bulk of the industry is on Negros: 60 per cent of the 450,000 hectares are planted with cane (five per cent of the total cultivated land of the are 33,000 farms, not be fooled by these figures. Fiftythree per cent of the planters own holdings of less than five hectares, therefore they occupy only nine per cent of the land. In contrast, seven per cent of planters have 50 hectares of the cultivated land.
In 1980, agricultural workers repper cent of the labour force; peasants renting their land 20 per cent; and industrial workers (in the refineries) 10 per cent. (There is also a small percentage of small owner-producers and of farm-leasing). The plantations concentrated on Negros island. the only island totally dependent on sugar, and so this is where the crisis is hitting hardest.
An NFSW-FGT activist explained the scope of the crisis to us: "It really began in 1984. In the 1984-85 season, 224,000 hectares of sugar cane were planted. Only 135,734 hectares were harvested. There's no money and no coming in from sales. In 1985, 152,095 hectares were planted, but two-thirds were planted with old plants whose profitability dropped rapidly. Next year there should big investments to replace them.
"There is no capital. The banks are refusing to make new loans and many planters are having to mortgage themselves to the hilt to carry
The future is grim. The American market is closing up. The Philippine quota is continually decreasing. For 1985 it was still 324,000 tons. In 1986 it fell to 231,000 tons. Washington wants to fix it at 180,000 tons for next year, and if nothing changes the American plans, our quota will be down to zero in 1990.
"As for world prices, they have fallen catastrophically. A pound of sugar was 28.66 US cents in 1980;
today it is worth 4 cents. But the cost of production here is more than 10 cents! This explains the fall in production: from 20 million piculs on Negros in 1981, we were down to 15 million in 1985. (10) You have to what that means workers in the industry. Everything goes together. The cultivated area is decreasing rapidly, the days worked per year as well. The refineries are shutting down for good, and the plantations are starting to be mechanized. A plantation that has been fully mechanized reduces its workforce by population is under threat."
figures that Nita per day for the sugar plantation workers (22.5 pesos basic wage, and 9.5 emergency cost-of-living allowance), while it is 44 pesos on other types of plantations. (20 pesos equals approximately 1 US dollar). The wage of industrial workers in the refineries is officially fixed at 42 pesos per day. Starvation wages are truly starvation wages, even taking account of Philippine prices. And yet less than per percent of the planters pay the official minimum wage. A lot of them have to a piece-work system. They pay, for example, 14 pesos per ton of cane cut and loaded onto lorries. This is exhausting work. A good worker can process 1.5 tons in a day (from sunrise to sunset), thereby earning barely 20 pesos 1 US dollar! Frequently wages for a day's work are 10 pesos or Already deeply in debt, workers will put whole families to work to earn a little more: "Often children will leave school to work when they are nine years-old."
That is not even the whole story. Wages are only paid for days worked. Because of the off-season, when the soil is prepared and the cane is planted, agricultural workers would mally have work for 180 days per year. With reduced production, labour rotation and mechanization, this in reality often falls to 120 days per year. "During six or six and a half months, workers find themselves without work and therefore income - however low."
A family on the Santo Rosario hacienda confirmed "During the six months of the offseason, we try to find odd jobs, such as cutting trees for charcoal-burning, then selling the charcoal in the market. But money from this does not go very far. The main problem continues to be food. We plant bananas and potatoes and so on - we can't get much else to eat. There is no money for clothes for the children, but the teachers refuse to let them into the class if they are not dressed properly. They are afraid that they are dirty and will contaminate the others. There is no longer any money to repair the house, buy medicines or take the kids to hospital when they
During our stay in Negros, children were around us all the time. They are the first victims. According to a recent study, 66 per cent of children in western Negros are undernourished. Nearly half of them suffer third degree malEmergency been set up in Bacolod and elsewhere, but parents can only take their children to them regularly if they live very close. As for education, less than 10 per cent of children finish their studies through lack of money and decent clothes.
"This is poverty. We have put our hopes in cultivating plots of land that we have got from the planter. But even then, to develop them we need money for fertilizer, for pesticides .... We don't have time to wait. We need money every day. Getting money every day is even more important than the land."
The demand for farm lots has long been a part of the programme of the union. The demand was that land allocated to plantation workers so that they could supplement their diet and their income, by selling surplus produce in the market. But with sugar industry, the struggle to win the right to cultivate the land for subsistence purposes has taken on an
Today it is at the centre of the union's concerns and activity. planters have big financial difficulties. They no longer have the means to and the interest on bank loans often amounts to 40 or 45 per cent a year. In this situation, how can workers get what would only be the equivalent of the official minimum wage? But the condition for workers' demands are totally reasonable: that planters allocate 10 percent of their land to their workers so that they produce food to survive. This is in a context where at least 30 per cent of sugar cane land remains fallow." mously supported. From the NFSW-
A "picul" is a unit of measurement, varying slightly from region to region, which is equivalent to approximately 60 kilos.
International Viewpoint 13 October 1986
FGT, to Monseigneur Fortich and the NPA, all demand that 10 per cent of land be allocated to the agricultural workers. There is a lot of international support for this, and some initial results have been obtained. Even so, the fight remains difficult.
The sugar workers have been superexploited for many generations: debts pass from father to son, chaining the families to the plantations. What is more, the workers have also been super-oppressed. "A culture of submissiveness has been built here, perhaps more than anywhere else in the Philippines." It has not been uncommon for workers to ask the planter for permission to marry, or ask him to resolve their family con-
- even to ask him to choose names for their children!
"It has been a long struggle to organize plantation workers in the face of the repression. Since 1971, when our union was formed, 16 of our organizers have been killed, not counting ordinary members have disappeared. It is also hard to organize against this submissive culture. Some planters have accused us of being agitators. We have only sought to restore some identity and dignity to men and women who have been deprived of them, to help them discover the meaning of their rights.
"Some planters are furious. They try to get back at the trade unionists in a thousand ways - refusing to advance money for medical needs, houses damaged typhoons, discrimination in distributing work and so on. They go as far as cutting rice subsidies during the off-season, even though they are vital. And they even lockout workers. But the feeling of regained human dignity is a force to be reckoned with. The workers continue to fight, and the union is extending its implantation. The NFSW now has 85,000 members, of which 55,000 are in western Negros. We now cover Iloilo, Leyte, eastern Negros and soon Cebu," Nita explained to us.
Perhaps 30 percent of planters, mostly small- and medium-sized producers, have agreed to allocate some land to their workers for an initial period of one year. The NFSW-FGT also won the right to temporarily distribute 4,000 hectares of land. Still it is too little, and making this land workable poses many problems. In mid-August, only 1,000 hectares were effectively being worked, but the cultivated area is spreading rapidly.
Money is needed to begin production. The agricultural workers do not have it. The union has set up a revolving fund, from which sums are available at a very low rate. Once a successful harvest allows it to be repaid the money is then advanced to other villages in need. Some religious and lay agencies help to make up this fund, such as the Catholic Committee against Hunger and for Development (CCFD) in France, and the Freres des Hommes. It is to be hoped that international aid can be broadened, and that people will work actively to achieve that.
The NFSW-FGT is also researching environmentally safe cultivation techniques which would allow considerable reduction in the costs of commercial fertilizers and pesticides. Such methods include using seeds more suited to the conditions, producing natural green fertilizers (with nitrogen as in Vietnam), pesticides from plants, and so on. Revival of subsistence agriculture
This orientation corresponds where in the Philippines to a much preoccupation. Capitalist agriculture seems out of reach to an ever growing number of peasants who can no longer face its escalating costs. In certain areas, such as the island of Mindanao, some are tempted to withdraw from the market and revive subsistence agriculture.
Diverse experiments are being tried in many regions. The NFSW-FGT has come up against a very problem on Negros. It has to rebuild a whole peasant agriculture (from rice cultivation to animal rearing) on land tilled for sugar cane and with a population which has over some generations lost peasant skills. It is an impossible task, but it is hard to envisage another for this disaster-stricken
The NFSW-FGT is not confining itself to relaunching rice cultivation or establishing more ecological methods of farming. Other forms of subsistence are being propagated: maize, sweet potatoes, vegetables and also various forms of animal husbandry, such as raising pigs, fresh-water fish and even snails. At all costs, they must find sources of protein. Milk production from water buffaloes, which are the main beasts of burden in the archiand from goats — vital for the children - is also encouraged. Milk has, in fact, become a luxury are being organized to transmit the necessary knowledge and discuss the outcome of experiences. The first harvests have often been mediocre. They must be improved. And the areas for action have to be broadened: building more health centres, producing more medicines for local use, such as vitamins, and cough medicines, building up a new cottage production of items such as paper and soap.
It is necessary to rebuild a viable and durable economy. "This is one of the reasons why we lent out money, instead of simply asking the international agencies to give it," Archie explained. "Interest rates are only 10 per cent a year and the repayments are only made if the harvest permits it. But workers must learn to take account of real costs. If not,
NFSW-FGT They have not They stole hope. here. BUt wno
Enrile?" sighed Nita. om 10d
11. M16s American rifles which are also used by the guerrillas.
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